How Jay Graber Is Making Sure Bluesky Never Turns Into Elon Musk’s X

Forbes

Since Elon Musk torpedoed Twitter, Bluesky has seen a stunning surge. CEO Jay Graber is working on “billionaire-proofing” social media against any similar takeover.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2025/01/03/jay-graber-bluesky-elon-musk-x/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes,

00:02how Jay Graber is making sure Blue Sky

00:05never turns into Elon Musk's ex.

00:09Two months after the social network Blue Sky

00:12launched in February 2023,

00:14it got its first bona fide celebrity user,

00:17the humorist known as Drill.

00:20An absurdist Twitter character

00:22once described by the New Yorker as quote,

00:24one of America's incisive ongoing works of social criticism,

00:28Drill had a finger on the pulse of Twitter's

00:30decades old chaotic energy,

00:32and that energy was headed to Blue Sky.

00:36Despite his nearly two million followers at the time,

00:38Elon Musk's ex was no longer working for him,

00:41Drill told Forbes.

00:43He said, quote,

00:44their algorithm has been more aggressively prioritizing

00:47moronic political commentators and crypto scammers

00:50while pushing aside the people you actually follow.

00:53If Blue Sky can market itself as a sort of last bastion

00:56against ad bots, AI crap, and nefarious algorithms,

01:00I think we'll be in a very strong position.

01:04Blue Sky was never meant to be an app,

01:06or even a company.

01:07It began as an open source research project at Twitter,

01:10a Skunk Works team

01:12helmed by open internet evangelist Jay Graber.

01:16Graber's mandate was to build a protocol,

01:18a shared language that computers could use

01:20to talk to each other,

01:22designed specifically for social media.

01:25Through the at protocol, or authenticated transfer,

01:28Twitter and other companies

01:30would be able to exchange information with one another,

01:33creating an open network

01:34where posts could be freely shared across social platforms.

01:38But after Elon Musk bought Twitter,

01:40it became clear that Blue Sky was no longer on its roadmap.

01:44Twitter under Musk began to transform,

01:47facing an advertiser boycott,

01:49exodus of users,

01:50and eventually a name change to X.

01:53So the team that made the protocol spun up a quick app

01:56just to show how it might be used.

01:58They launched it as an invite-only social network in 2023.

02:03Graber began leading Blue Sky two years earlier.

02:06The move proved prophetic for Graber,

02:08who had previously worked in cryptocurrency

02:10and built social apps.

02:12Her mother, who grew up in China,

02:14gave her the first name Lantian,

02:16which means blue sky in Mandarin.

02:19The similarity, however, is coincidental,

02:21as the project had already been named

02:24before Graber's involvement.

02:25Since its launch, Blue Sky has seen unusual success.

02:29It raised a modest $15 million Series A round in October,

02:33when it had 13 million users.

02:35And since then, its user base has nearly doubled

02:38to more than 25 million.

02:41The app has panicked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg,

02:44whose own Twitter competitor, Threads,

02:46has rushed to copy many of its features.

02:48But as Drill recognizes,

02:50Blue Sky is a company with investors

02:52who want to make money.

02:53And that could someday clash

02:55with Graber's user-first approach to social media,

02:58to put the people using Blue Sky

02:59in control of its central features.

03:02Graber told Forbes, quote,

03:04"'Open-sourcing' the app,

03:06the choice there was to make sure

03:07that everyone could see how we were doing this,

03:10that it was possible to build social apps at scale,

03:12and that developers could just come in and start building."

03:16Rather than let Blue Sky itself determine

03:18what you see, in what order, and why,

03:21Graber and her team designed the app

03:23to let users create and subscribe to any number of feeds.

03:27Blue Sky's ethos of user choice extends beyond

03:30just which feeds you choose to follow.

03:33Don't like the company's lack of verification?

03:35Build your own system, like Hunter Walker,

03:37a journalist at Talking Points Memo did.

03:40Don't want to see AI art?

03:42Crowdsource a labeling and filtering system

03:44to detect and block it.

03:46In giving power to the people,

03:48Blue Sky has so far eschewed the strategy

03:50that other social platforms have used

03:52to make billions of dollars,

03:53collecting troves of intimate data about their users,

03:56and then letting advertisers target them

03:58based on that data.

04:00At least today, Blue Sky is fully public,

04:03and its user data is available to people

04:05outside the company, so there's no secret sauce

04:08for advertisers to pay for.

04:10It's not that Graber is opposed to ads,

04:12but when it comes to social media,

04:14she said they've become, quote,

04:15"'overly extractive.'"

04:18For full coverage, check out Emily Baker White

04:20and Richard Nieves' piece on forbes.com.

04:24This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.

04:27Thanks for tuning in.

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